It's been over 5 years since I started FemaleDwarf.com, and it's been a great experience for me. I've learned a lot from my work on the site, and I've greatly enjoyed being able to contribute to and participate in our wonderful hunter community. It's with a heavy heart that I announce I don't plan to update the site for the Warlords of Draenor expansion. I've greatly enjoyed my experience in WoW over these almost 10 years, but I'm not sure if I'll continue playing in the upcoming expansion, and I just can't make the time investment required to keep this site up to date with it.

When I started this site, hunter options for optimization and theorycrafting were a lot more limited. Simulationcraft is now a much more mature and easier to use tool. Esoth is now working on his own web based theorycraft tool at http://www.wowhuntertools.com/hunter/. Ask Mr Robot is a popular alternative option. I hope the hunter community will continue to be well served by these and any new tools that may come along in the future.

I want to thank all the people who've helped make the site a success over the years: the authors of the original hunter spreadsheets that the site was inspired by and based on, the hunter bloggers that helped get out the word about the site, the many hunter theorycrafters whose work has helped me keep the site up to date and accurate, the devs who've made a real effort in the last few years to engage the theorycrafting community and the player base at large, the volunteer translators that have helped make the site more useful to WoW players in many countries. I also must thank the many wonderful users of the site, some of whom have sent donations over the years, or have shared their stories with me of their experiences with the site, helped make suggestions for improvement or have offered to help in whatever way they could. The hunter community is full of great people that made me proud that I could do my bit to help.

Please drag shots to the priority list to reflect your shot priority. Shots with no focus cost or cooldown (steady/cobra) must be the last shot in the list or no shots after it will be fired. Aimed shot will only be used when instant unless you specify otherwise in the settings. Fervor and focus fire will be used on cooldown unless disabled.

Estimate your DPS

Set your Shot Priority to reflect the shots you use and the priority you use them in. It's fastest to use the Enable Common Shot Priority button, then adjust by dragging the shots around as needed.

Set the Buffs/Debuffs you generally have access to while raiding. Typically it's best to use the Enable Best Raid Buffs and Enable Best Raid Debuffs buttons, then customize as needed.

Make any other adjustments you like (the Settings section allows you to adjust options like fight length)

Use the Update DPS button (below all the form sections) to see your estimated dps.

Compare and Optimize

Once you have an estimated dps you can make changes to your gear, talents, etc. then use the Update DPS button again to see how your dps changes, which should give you a rough idea of how to optimize your character. Everytime you use the update dps, there will be a display of the difference in dps from the last time you used the update dps option.

You can use the Save Settings option to create an account and save all your settings so you can reload them later or share them with others. You can have as many saved settings as you like, and you can load only some sections of your settings if you would like to mix and match (i.e. load gear from one setting and a spec and shot priority from another). You can use the copy button in the setting listing under Load Settings to obtain a URL you can copy for your settings which you can give to others.

If you don't want to create an account or if you just want to make notes of your dps at various points in your comparison process, you can use the DPS Scratchpad which allows you to save a note with the current displayed DPS and a label you choose. You can save as many dps notes as you like so you can refer to them later.

Learn from your DPS

The Combined dps displayed at the top of the results is an estimate of your optimal dps. Note these results are under ideal conditions and in an actual fight setting they will naturally vary depending on the type of fight, movement requirements, skill and other factors.

The second column shows estimated DPS per stat. This gives a rough average of how much dps an additional amount of that stat will give you. This is helpful in evaluating gemming decisions as well as comparing the value of gear. Note that haste in particular tends to scale unevenly since it will shift shots around and tends to be overestimated in value since in normal fights movement requirements will cause you to use less shots affected by haste than simulated.

The third column has links for Gear Comparison to outside sites that will use the DPS per stat values to give an idea of potential upgrades. There is also a string you can copy to use for the Pawn mod which allows you to compare gear in game. Note that gear comparison sites tend to evaluate individual gear upgrades outside the context of your entire gear, so the value of hit on your gear won't necessarily be considered accurately if it affects your hit cap status.

In the Final Stats section there are your estimated stat values in combat. Of particular use is the Hit section which will show if you're below or above the hit cap.

The Gear Bonuses section displays all special bonuses from your equipment. For set bonuses it will also display an estimated dps amount contributed just from the set bonus.

The Shot Priority section will show estimated damage from your shots so you have a rough idea of where your damage is coming from and how best to prioritize.

To export your gear and stat weights to Mr. Robot, you must provide your character information. Note that although your gear, spec type and stat weights will be passed from the dps analyzer, your reforging, gems and enchants will be loaded from Armory due to limitations in the way Mr. Robot functions.